The Gospel of Luke, chapter 17:10

Do you ever feel that people talk too much? Many of us do, I suppose, for it is so much easier to talk than to act. Television shows feature expert communicators who can talk about hunger without ever feeding anyone or who can talk about ending war without ever using their influence to change national policies that lead to war. We do love to talk about family life, about raising children, about being religious, about peace and even about the best ways for husbands and wives to get along together. Yet, all the talk in the world rarely accomplishes anything of lasting value. That is the hard-nosed message in today’s scripture. Let’s stop talking, and start doing something about our problems.

Jesus’ parable about the end of time has always fascinated his followers. In that parable, He commends those who did good works like feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and condemns those who failed to do these things. There is no word of blessing for those who said they were going to act but did not, no word of forgiveness for those who did the planning or talked about the problem or studied the reasons behind the hunger of their time. The only thing that Jesus blessed was action. Today, our bureaucracies have study-programs and more study-programs, yet little is ever done. It is so much easier to talk about overcoming evil than to get out there and do something about it.

The greatest heroes in the early church were their martyrs. They were the witnesses to the truth of Jesus. They put their lives on the line and acted out Jesus’ commandments. They called their church not theory but simply “the way.” Christians were to live their lives as Jesus had commanded and others could theorize as much as they wanted. They were simple people with few words and little theoretical background. They knew what Jesus expected of them and they did it as a matter of duty in their everyday lives.

St. Thomas Aquinas was, many believe, the greatest of the Catholic theologians. He wrote volumes of the most erudite Christian thinking that the church had ever seen. He was celebrated not only as a scholar but as a poet, too, for he wrote memorable verse that is still used in the liturgy today. Toward the end of his life, he is said to have pointed to all his books and remarked to an assistant, “This is all straw, nothing but straw.”

By this he meant that, in comparison with living out the message of the Gospel, words are only straw.

Christian experience, not theology, per se, is the primary language of the Gospel. That is why Jesus says: “when you have done all you have been told to do, say: we have only done our duty.”

Fr. Hugh Duffy.